2-067 - Childhood Adversity and Fear Learning Mechanisms

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Although childhood adversity is common and a robust risk factor for multiple forms of psychopathology, the mechanisms linking childhood adversity and mental health outcomes remain poorly understood. Experiencing childhood adversity – such as exposure to trauma – may alter the way people learn about threat in their environments, and altered aversive learning represents one potential mechanism linking childhood adversity with psychopathology. However, there has been limited characterization of fear learning across development and research examining how childhood adversity influences the neurobiological and physiological underpinnings of fear learning processes is in its infancy. This symposium brings together work on childhood adversity and fear learning processes, incorporating multiple modalities and developmental perspectives. The first talk investigates how childhood adversity influences neural circuitry during fear conditioning and extinction, the processes by which individuals learn to start and stop associating threat with specific stimuli. Building on this foundation, the second talk examines the associations of childhood adversity with neural recruitment and dynamic learning during fear conditioning and associations of neural patterns during dynamic learning with psychopathology in a large developmental sample. The third talk considers how individual factors like age and gender may longitudinally modulate the discrimination of threat and safety cues during fear conditioning. Together, this work offers a more complete picture of the ways in which childhood adversity impacts threat-related learning processes in ways that may increase risk for psychopathology, which may ultimately enable us to better identify possible targets for interventions in early life and encourage more positive trajectories.

Sub Unit

• Biological Processes: Neuroscience and Genetics

Chair

• Stephanie N. DeCross, Harvard University

Discussant

• Katie McLaughlin, Harvard University

Individual Presentations

• Early Adversity and Cortico-Amygdala Activation During Fear Conditioning Among Adolescents - Presenting Author: Meghan Vinograd, University of California, Los Angeles; Non-Presenting Author: Katherine S. Young, University of California, Los Angeles; Non-Presenting Author: Michael Sun, University of California, Los Angeles; Non-Presenting Author: Lindsay K. Staples-Bradley, University of California, Los Angeles; Non-Presenting Author: Katherine S. F. Damme, Northwestern University; Non-Presenting Author: Nicholas J. Kelley, Northwestern University; Non-Presenting Author: Iris K. Y. Chat, Northwestern University; Non-Presenting Author: Susan Y. Bookheimer, University of California, Los Angeles; Non-Presenting Author: Richard E. Zinbarg, Northwestern University; Non-Presenting Author: Robin Nusslock, Northwestern University; Non-Presenting Author: Michelle G. Craske, University of California, Los Angeles

• Associations of Childhood Trauma With Dynamic Fear Conditioning and Psychopathology - Presenting Author: Stephanie N. DeCross, Harvard University; Non-Presenting Author: Katie McLaughlin, Harvard University

• Preliminary Evidence for Sex-Specific Developmental Trajectories of Fear Learning in Trauma-Exposed Children - Presenting Author: Anais Stenson, Emory University; Non-Presenting Author: Alisha B. Compton, Emory University; Non-Presenting Author: Sean T. Minton, Wayne State University School of Medicine; Non-Presenting Author: Nicole R. Nugent, Brown University School of Medicine; Non-Presenting Author: Tanja Jovanovic, Emory University School of Medicine, Wayne State University School of Medicine